The Narthex

What are we to make of World Cup Soccer fans? They are legion, are they not? Indeed, they constitute a spectacle as they celebrate futbol, the beautiful game, at its highest level. Now and then I suspect they are cheering for themselves as much as for their teams. Wrapped in…

"For in him we live and move and have our being" is a stunning truth. It comes to us from Epimenides, the legendary ancient Greek poet. St. Paul cites it in his Mars Hill sermon to the searching and often skeptical Athenians (see Acts 17:28). The idiosyncratic Bishop George Berkeley…

The burial service of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer speaks of the “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” John Henry Newman was, of course, deeply familiar with this language. Perhaps it prompted him to write his Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. It’s…

Baptisms and funerals -- and how I wish there were more of the first and fewer of the second! -- underscore our historical character. Consider, as well, how we mark an historic event by asking, for example, “Where were you when Leo XIV stepped forth as the first American pope?”…

“A place for everything and everything in its place” is a worthy maxim, if we know who and where we are. Often, though, we know neither. Or so it seems. Catholics believe that the human person is an incarnate spirit, a union of body and soul. But what kind of…

“All men by nature desire to know,” reads the first line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics. A bit of clarification is in order. Not all of the many students I’ve taught wanted to know about this bold claim. For some (like Bubba in the back row) it’s TMI, too much information. And…

As befits an octogenarian, I’ve been known to say, “Back in the day…,” but now and again a wise guy asks, “Just when was that?” So, to be more precise, I’ll refer to “the halcyon days of yore.” Nowadays, sadly, it has fallen on me to come to the defense…

Of late, there is an epidemic of excitement. Commerce crackles with it. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry is, respectively, so excited to be the new realtor in the neighborhood, the new car dealer in town, or the new sales chief for Gizmo, Inc. But wait! Every Tess, Kate, and Sally…

If the celebrated humanist Erasmus could pen the remarkable In Praise of Folly (1511), dedicating it to Thomas More, perhaps at this late date I can post a plug for the footnote. Think of adoxographia.[1] For a start, without the footnote, the heft of law journals would be…

“Been waiting for the bus?” I ask. “Too long,” answers Mrs. Kowalski, one of the regulars. “Late again, is it? Guess I’ll try for the afternoon run.” “Smart,” she answers, “but I’ve been sitting here too long to leave now.” Is she, gentle reader, throwing good money after bad? Sometimes…

“Ivan Ilych has died,” an acquaintance reads from the announcement of a formal obituary. Having followed earlier reports of Ivan’s mysterious illness, his colleagues in the judiciary are not surprised. In his classic story “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Tolstoy recounts how they mourn in keeping with the hardness of…

Is ours the best of all possible worlds? The philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) thought so, and it’s a positive thought, isn’t it? But how could we know whether his claim is true? Can we even specify what would make it so? (Politicians, to be sure, often boast…

It began for us in a garden, the Garden of Eden. But it was there, through our first parents, that we fell. Try as we might, we cannot go back to that idyll. Still, when the news turns to noise, when the pundits become ponderous, I head for my wife’s…

“Sharper than any two-edged sword” is how St. Paul characterizes God’s Word (Hebrews 4:12). If we are to show Scripture the reverence it is due, we must read it with sober care. In addressing the question of the authority of the State, Paul gives us a text that demands our…

There’s no shortage of true crime, and there hasn’t been since Cain murdered Abel. Fast forward and, turning from fratricide to parricide, we have the murders of Rob and Michelle Reiner, allegedly at the hands of their son. Nor is there any shortfall of state violence. The protests in response…